While lotteries and games of chance are ubiquitous, they have changed little since their inception. A lottery, generally speaking, is a contest in which tokens are distributed or sold, and the winning token or tokens are predetermined or selected in a random drawing. A game of chance, generally speaking, is a game that is usually played for money or stakes, in which the winner is determined by a chance event, e.g., drawing numbers or throwing dice.
A quality of most lotteries and games of chance is that selection and communication of winning contest and lottery results are virtually instantaneous. Players of these games experience little suspense or engaging drama over a period of time as may be experienced when a bet is placed on a horse race or a sporting event. The length of excitement typically experienced by a lottery player is no longer than the period of time taken to read the winning results and to check these results against their tickets. The period of excitement typically experienced by a contest entrant is no longer than the length of time taken to learn whether they were the winning entrant, or in many cases, no time at all, if the entrant does not eventually seek out the information regarding the contest's winner, and instead, only hopes to be notified if they have been fatefully selected as the winner.
Moreover, many lotteries and games of chance involve placing a bet upon a token or number in which the player has no vested emotional interest. For example, a person who draws a number at random in a game of chance or who plays a state lottery using random numbers does not have a vested emotional interest in those numbers. While in some cases a player may play numbers in a lottery that represent something of value to the player, e.g., a birthday or an anniversary date, the vested emotional interest in the actual numbers themselves is low. The number of opportunities a lottery player has to create unique lottery tickets, each with vested emotional interest, is also low.
Moreover, while most lotteries and games of chance each share some characteristic that provides a degree of certainty that the lottery or game of chance cannot be fixed or outsmarted (i.e., the winner is left to chance), that same characteristic often hides much, if not all, of the details of how the winner was determined. For example, in order to ensure that the drawing of numbers from a hat is random (and presumably fair), one cannot view the positions of all the numbers in the hat one may choose from prior to selecting a number from the hat. In another example, in order to ensure the winning lottery numbers are randomly chosen, one may not observe the behavior of the numbered ping pong balls in the dispenser in which they are drawn over a prolonged length of time prior to buying a lottery ticket. While these characteristics help ensure the lotteries and games of chance are fair, they also disengage the player by hindering the player's ability to become emotionally invested in the process that determines the outcome of the game.
Accordingly, there is an unaddressed need in the art to provide an entertaining lottery or game of chance that overcomes the aforementioned problems associated with prior approaches.